The Martian shows Hollywood's Chinese connection has lift-off

In this week’s roundup of the global box-office scene:

• Ridley Scott’s film takes $50m in China after becoming the latest to include special scenes• Pixar turns in lowest ever US opening for troubled The Good Dinosaur• Creed follows Straight Outta Compton as African-American breakout

The Chinese overture

US talkshow host Stephen Colbert recently lampooned the phenomenon, but evidence is stacking up that shoehorning in a China-set scene actually works for Hollywood blockbusters. The Martian, in which the China National Space Administration saves both Nasa’s and Matt Damon’s asses, has just opened strongly over there with $50.1m (£33.3m). You can’t discount the importance of being the autumn’s breakout blockbuster elsewhere – but nor can Ridley Scott’s plot choices be dismissed, especially in the light of other films that have climbed on board what Colbert has dubbed the “Pander Express”. Roland Emmerich’s 2012 wasn’t the first tentpole release to do it (that was probably Mission: Impossible 3, a little too early in 2006).

But having the Chinese army save the day saw an unmistakeable bounce ($68.7m) in that country for a relatively star-light film in 2009. Skyfall’s Shanghai and Macau-set scenes were partly censored, but the Bond franchise still more than doubled its take there (Skyfall: $59.2m; Quantum of Solace: $21m). Transformers: Age of Extinction trashed Hong Kong on its way to a Hollywood record in China ($320m) that stood until Furious 7 this year. Some of these leaps are admittedly difficult to untangle from Chinese box-office growth overall. The one that undeniably outperforms even that is Iron Man 3, which came in a separate, tailored version (ie with a couple of extra scenes) and whose marketing was carefully honed by local powerhouse DMG. The result: a stupendous hike from previous Iron Mans (1: $15.2m; 2: $7.9m; 3: $121.2m). Now imagine what Hollywood could achieve with an actual Chinese protagonist.

The forgotten Pixar film

Delayed by 18 months, ditching Up co-director Bob Peterson on the way, The Good Dinosaur has “development hell” stamped all over it. After Pixar’s Inside Out tickled both intellectual and emotional hemispheres of the brain in the summer to widespread rapture, there has been an almost total lack of anticipation for its second film of 2015. The Good Dinosaur’s $39.2m US debut this weekend is unsurprisingly a disappointment by Pixar standards; the studio’s lowest ever, if you take inflation into account.

But perhaps given the lack of marketing oomph behind it, it’s not a complete disaster. Rather than its conceptually highfalutin studio mates, better comparison points might be the fellow prehistoric-themed CGI cartoons Ice Age and The Croods. The Good Dinosaur still lags behind on both – especially if you factor in inflation for 2002’s Ice Age – but stays within their range, both in the US and other key territories (US: IA, $46.3m; Cr, $43.6m, TGD, $39.2m / UK: IA, $4.3m; Cr, $8m, TGD, $4.3m / Mexico: IA, $5.9m; Cr, $4.3m, TGD, $3.6m). No one is pretending this is Pixar’s finest hour. But the stone-age setting (always reliably generic global blockbuster fodder), fable-like simplicity and genuinely stunning landscape rendering should carry The Good Dinosaur a respectable distance worldwide. The budget is an intimidating $200m, but Pixar has yet to have a true commercial failure – even with less critically fawned-over works such as Cars and Monsters University. The Croods made $587.2m in 2013; if The Good Dinosaur gets close, it will enter Pixar’s top 10.

The local champ

With a $30.1m three-day US debut, or $42.6m counted over the full Thanksgiving holiday, Rocky spin-off Creed is dancing like a butterfly, if not quite stinging like a bee. That is the 10th highest Thanksgiving opening – and social-media buzz is rapidly coalescing around Ryan Coogler’s film, which follows the son of Balboa’s one-time rival Apollo Creed as he tries to launch his own boxing career. With discussion partly focusing on an enlightened, laidback attitude to race relations, Creed reinforces the sense that 2015 – after Straight Outta Compton’s $161m gross – has seen African-American film intersect with the mainstream more comfortably than before. Heartening, given the agonising resurgence of America’s problem with police brutality, which has now drawn in Quentin Tarantino. On a side note, it’s also great to see mainstream-impacting films driven by specific, topographically rooted cultural factors, as opposed to the bland globalised gruel of so many digital blockbusters.

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The downside to that, box office-wise, is that their reach is probably limited. Straight Outta Compton was heavily US-slanted (80.4%); outside of four key markets – the UK ($12.2m), Australia ($8.7m), Germany ($5.4m) and France ($3.4m) – it didn’t do significant business. Rather surprising, considering hip-hop’s worldwide catchment area. Creed, which debuted in seven overseas markets this weekend, went out lower than Compton in Australia ($1.2m to SOC’s $3.1m), higher in the UAE ($333K to SOC’s $87K). Fairly modest stuff. It’ll have to work Sylvester Stallone’s presence hard (if he truly has any long-distance cachet these days), plus any awards talk that might snowball from its US buzz, in order to register internationally.

Beyond Hollywood

Two Chinese newcomers this week: in the finest noir tradition is the incomprehensibly complicated thriller The Vanished Murderer, in at No 12 globally with $6m; and at No 15, grossing $4.7m, is action-comedy Bad Guys Always Die, teaming up prolific Taiwanese star Chen Bolin and South Korea’s Son Ye-jin for a caper on Jeju island – a popular holiday destination for both countries.

The future

It’s the global release window before Christmas, and very little will be stirring until the lightsabres are sparked up in a little over two and a half weeks’ time. Universal’s Yule horror Krampus takes on 25 markets this weekend – though, given the lack of stars and the somewhat awkwardly dichotomised tone laid out in the trailer, we probably shouldn’t expect too much. Perhaps hoping to exploit the pre-Star Wars lull, Warner Bros is releasing its Point Break remake in China on 3 December, three weeks before the Xmas-weekend US release. The very marginal set of territories accompanying it then, and the fact that the UK opening has been shifted back into February, suggest that the studio – which has had an abysmal year – doesn’t have total confidence in it. But a good result in China might get audiences elsewhere to buy Luke Bracey in the Keanu Reeves role, which helped make the 1991 original so guiltily pleasurable. Then again, the $100m film could just as easily be wiped off the map by a decent hold from The Martian, as well as debuting Chinese sci-fi comedy Impossible, which has a formidable triumvirate of local megastars on deck in the shape of Wang Baoqiang (Lost in Thailand), Xiaoshenyang and Da Peng (Jian Bing Man).